How To Create Your Own Home Media Server?

Having your own media server is one of the dream for every person who likes to watch movies or listen to the music. Wouldn’t it be better if we could put together all our media at one place and sit back on couch to surf/view on your TV? Now days we have more choices of hardware for creating media server with less investment. Let see what kind of gadgets are available for building your own media server.

1) Buying a ready to use, feature packed media server. This might cost a bit more but less hassles, less DIY stuff and easy to configure, ready to be used right out of the box. Click on the picture for detail pricing.

One of the popular affordable media server is by Western Digital, the mini server comes with built in Wifi, remote control, HDMI output, Netflix, Spotify, Youtube, Facebook, Hulu etc.:

This one is kdLinks HD700 which has additional features like 3D capabilities, 4 extra USB ports, more video format support.

2) Using NAS servers with multiple USB ports where you can hook up your external USB hard drive or USB drive.

Some of the well known NAS servers are:

Cirago NUS 2000, Linux based NAS server with 4 USB ports, Read and write support for NTFS, FAT32, EXT2 file systems. It does not comes with WiFi but it does have RJ45 port for network cable hookup. Good thing is you can share your printer on your home network with this device.

Few other similar options are:

NETGEAR WNCE2001 Universal WiFi Internet Adapter

Vantec NexStar FX Gigabit NAS Adapter

New-Media sharing device

Kensington ShareCentral 2 for USB Device Sharing

3) Using Old laptop/desktop computer as a media server. If you have a spare old laptop with Wifi or desktop then you can install some cool free media sharing software like XBMC and share your media content over your home network.

4) Use a latest trendy little Android Mini Computer which hooks up directly into your TV’s HDMI port.
It all started with ability to build smaller computers. Computers are becoming smaller and smaller with it’s processing power becoming larger and larger. Besides your cellphone, there are many other small computers in the market nowadays.

Raspberry Pi was the one which started a real buzz on small computer which costed about $25 USD and up. If you are really into DIY, then this would be your choice. This one does not comes in a fancy box, it’s just a bare bone board with different ports like USB, power, network. You can buy it from Raspberry Pi or go to below links (Pricing is higher with these sellers).

Another small computer option is to get a USB stick like Android Mini Computers. Chinese sellers are flooding US market with so many different versions of Android Mini Computers.

The price range from $35 – $85 depending on what is inside the device. It comes with single/dual/quad core CPU with 500MB/1GB RAM, HDMI male port so that you can plug it into TV, USB ports, Built in WiFi, Bluetooth, Micro SD card slot, built in memory up to 4 GB, IR port, etc. depending on which device you choose. These are easy to use out of the box, just plug in to your TV’s HDMI port, plug in USB for power, connect wireless/bluetooth keyboard+mouse and suddenly your dumb TV becomes a smart TV with Android Jelly Bean!

Here are some of the Android Mini Computers. Click on the picture to view the details.